This applies to all drugs e.g. LT3 liothyronine which Mercury Pharma have the monopoly on the UK, changed its licence to the generic from brand and now sell it for over £250 for 28 tablets (T3 Action Group facebook.com/groups/2975338...)

Stop the questionable practice by the pharmaceutical industry price hiking the drugs we need to ensure our quality of life!

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I do believe the Government are already planning to do just that, they seem to have finally become aware that the big pharma have them by the goolies when it come to overcharging for what are often very cheaply produced medication. I was thinking of tipping off the Daily Mail as I have the receipt for the 90 T3 I bought in Crete which cost me all of €3.90!

A few years ago this was sold as Goldshield Tertroxin at around £12 for 28 tablets. After name and ownership changes (-> Mercury -> Amdipharm -> Concordia), it is now £258 for the self-same tablets - but now sold as a generic. The Patient Information Leaflet still includes the name Tertroxin! (I think it still reaches the market in some countries as Tertroxin.)

There is competition in the world market with Sanofi making similar products in Germany (former Henning) and France, Uni-Pharma in Greece, Abdi Ibrahim in Turkey, Pfizer, Sigmapharm, Perrigo and Mylan in the USA, and others. The prices are astonishingly different - less than two euros in Greece and similar in Turkey.

Unlike some medicines, there is no possibility of switching to another medicine. If all you need is the other thyroid hormone medicine (levothyroxine), that is all you would be getting. Liothyronine has long been somewhat deprecated with consultants and GPs often claiming that it has no place in treatment whilst others accept it is an essential medicine.

This massive increase in price has meant that:

Those getting it are having their repeat prescriptions revoked.

Those not getting it are having an even more difficult time finding a doctor willing to prescribe.

Those getting insufficient are failing to get a dose increase. (Patients might need anything from about 5 to 150 micrograms a day with typical doses being 20 to 60.)

All this against a background of good science finding liothyronine really is important with the genetic make-up of some people being why they need it. And it is also being used and investigated for non-thyroid medicine such as psychiatry and heart disease.

So we end up with the situation in which a considerable proportion of the NHS patients who need it are actually buying their own from abroad. (Many actually prefer the products they get from abroad. There have been many complaints about the quality of Mercury's liothyronine over the same years in which the price has rocketed.)

This is one place where pan-European medicine licensing could be of huge benefit. (Or simple recognition of a licence in one country to be valid in another EU member state. Even if optional and on a medicine by medicine basis.) If the pharmacies of the UK could simply source from Greece, the battle over the cost of this medicine might be over. Ironically, the cost of liothyronine is lower in Greece than the price of levothyroxine in the UK. And levothyroxine is often held up as a cheap medicine.